Scheduling across time zones

Scheduling in a global team cannot be solved simply by lining up free time. When setting a meeting across 3 locations, Tokyo (UTC+9), London (UTC+0/+1), and New York (UTC-5/-4), there are only 1-2 hours in which everyone can join within normal working hours. Getting over the time zone barrier takes both ingenuity in finding times and ways of working that do not depend on time.

Overlapping hours in major cities

Strategies for time zone coordination

1. Find the golden hour

Identify the "golden hour" when working hours overlap at every location, and fix important meetings to that window. Two locations may overlap by 3-4 hours, but with 3 or more the overlap shrinks to 1-2 hours. Reserve this precious window for meetings that need decisions, and share information asynchronously.

2. The rotation method

To avoid the unfairness of one location always being stuck with early-morning or late-night meetings, rotate the meeting time each week. For example, set it up like this.

• Week 1: align with Asian hours (early morning or late night for Europe and the US)
• Week 2: align with European hours (evening for Asia, early morning for the US)
• Week 3: align with US hours (late night for Asia, evening for Europe)

3. An async-first culture

GitLab, known as a multinational all-remote company, champions "async first" and publishes in its Handbook a policy of holding discussions in documents and using meetings only for the final stage of reaching agreement. This approach is designed to push the time zone constraint itself out of the discussion.

Handling daylight saving time

When Europe and the US switch daylight saving time (roughly in March and in October-November), the time difference with Japan shifts by 1 hour. Overlooking this leads to arriving an hour late to meetings. Here is how to prevent it.

• Always send calendar invitations with the time zone attached
• Before the switchover week, remind people that the time difference changes next week
• Make a habit of reconfirming recurring meeting times after the switch

Useful tools and notation

When dealing with time zones, writing everything as UTC offsets prevents confusion. Abbreviations such as "JST" and "EST" can be ambiguous (for example, CST means different things in the US, China, and Cuba), so writing numeric offsets such as "UTC+9" and "UTC-5" is the reliable choice.